... still his philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine.

Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.

The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will.' Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible.

A very little key will open a very heavy door.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

Vladimir Nabokov said the two great evils of the 20th century were Marx and Freud. He was absolutely correct.

Noble spirits are heterodox.

You know you are fat when you hug a child and it gets lost.

I have always been rather better treated in San Francisco than I actually deserved.

All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time.

When I'm not writing music, I'm playing guitar, or reading philosophy. So all I have left is just an hour or two for Claudia Schiffer.

Culture is not a biologically transmitted complex

I stated at Justice [John] Roberts' hearing, the court's injected itself into many of the political debates of our day.

You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone.